Sometimes, in between all the heavy euros and troops on a map Ameritrash games, I do like a good party game. Something that encourages laughter, can be played by nearly everyone and something that stimulates raucousness. Step forward Blurgh, a game full of swearing, which is part of the rules, shouting and slamming the table. Add a few alcoholic beverages and you will have a rip-roaring good time at the end of any game night.
Scratch Cards And Swearing
Blurgh is a very simple game, which is what you really want from party games. The game will live or die by its group. Blurgh enables players to add new cards in unique and inventive ways, so again, this game is very group-dependent. The game comes with scratch cards that allow the players to add unique cards to the game and create some quite funny moments, in-jokes and get each other to do some wild things. It's quite brilliant from this standpoint.
The premise is simple, each player has a deck of cards and the first player to get rid of all their cards wins, easy as peas right? Well no, not really, especially after a few old-fashioned’s. I do love an old-fashioned, you know. Your deck is made of a few types of cards that are made up from several in-built decks and any cards you, as a group, have created.
The main chunk of your deck is made up of colour cards. These cards either have black text or colour text. If the text is black you have to shout out the background colour of the card and if the text is coloured you have to shout out that colour. What makes this difficult though is the fact the word on the card normally matches neither, making your brain pickle a little bit. (Especially with added old-fashioneds)
Along with these cards are challenge cards which range from reverse cards, skip cards and various challenges that will mix up the game flow and rhythm. There are also ‘F*CK’ cards, which also follow the same rules as the colour cards. The deck is also sprinkled with swear words that you just have to shout at the top of your voice, lovely!
Drawing And Custom Cards
Included in Blurgh is a deck of scratch cards and some ‘scratching’ implements. These cards are also coloured and have different colours under the surface so you can create cards relating to colours, swear words or even, as we did, add a few naughty and funny challenges to do. The neighbors must have thought the worse when we kept running outside and shouting “WILLIES” at the top of our voices.
These scratch cards also come into the fold at the start of the game. Everyone must draw a portrait of the person sitting opposite them, these get mixed into the deck and when your card gets revealed, you need to shout “F*CK” at the top of your voice. Good wholesome, British fun. I did like this aspect of the game, especially with some of the rubbish portraits that were drawn, which were hilarious every time they were drawn.
Winning The Game
As I said above the way to win the game is to get rid of your deck of cards. The issue with this is as soon as you take too long shouting or doing what your card requires, or you get it incorrect any other player can slam the pile of cards in the middle. When this happens they can distribute the top 2 cards to anyone, then the rest go to the player who got their card incorrect, or took too long. This happened quite a bit (see old-fashioned statement) and made the game both hilarious and irksome in equal measure.
Big Box, Small But Great Components
While I do like the components in this big box, I do feel, yet again, that the box should have been at least half the size, there's a lot of air contained within. It's a bugbear of mine and I wish people would stop doing it but I feel, at this point, I'm just shouting into the void about it now. What you do get component-wise, which is just cards, scratch cards and scratching implements, work well and look great. The cards are bright and legible and the scratch cards do their jobl.
Final Thoughts
Blurgh will not be for everyone. If you dislike swearing or anything a bit too silly, look elsewhere. However, if you like to shout c*nt at each other, make up new swear words and get each other doing stupid sh*t, this game may be for you.
Blurgh will not change your life, it does not do anything too clever but it does bring people together to laugh, call each other names and just have a giggly, good time. I enjoyed it quite a bit but I am a bit weird and it will certainly not be something I play too often. I will certainly enjoy myself when I do though. Laters tw*t-waffles!